Thoughts on Entrepreneurship, Leadership and Motivation

Flooding subscribers with sales pitches

I like a blog/website for the content it provided and I signed up on site’s blog subscription.

Since then I got email from the site every single day, exhorting me either to take action (and buy something) or follow the business practices recommended by author. It got so bad that I decided to opt out of email. I usually sign up for newsletters (with a lot of reluctance like most of us) because

I like the author’s content/tone

I would like to stay updated

It is then really painful to break that relationship (I am sure author was notified of my opting out of subscription).

There is a problem with shooting a lot of bullets at a target hoping to kill it. It might work in battle but in real life, the target has a lot of power over you. He or she may simply walk away from you.

# Personalization: The only personalization I saw in the newsletter was my name at the top, rest was all impersonal. Once I got a message with the line “Happy Saturday” in it when actually it was a Wednesday.

# Incorrect targeting: Every person subscribing to the site/blog has different needs. Someone might be interested in learning how you do things so well. Someone wants to know about the tools that you sell. Most of the people want to solve their problems first that listen to your pitches.

#Frequency: High frequency emails full of marketing pitches is going to irritate your subscribers. It may be only me but then I am sure no one likes a sales person ringing doorbell every morning to sell something. However, I have no objection to a newspaper even though it is full of ads (which I can ignore).

#Change of message: People subscribes to something because they like it. The message changes when all they get are sales pitches.

#Loss of trust: The advertised reason for someone to sign up is to “never miss an update” (which is acceptable). There is a trust deficit when they are flooded with marketing pitches.

#No real life connection: While I got filled with marketing messages, there was no personal connection. There was no connection on any social channel or even on email. Why would I buy things from a person who does not talk to me?

I collect email at this site. But I have resisted the temptation to send mails to my subscribers until I have something special to tell. I might also send a sales letter if I believe it might help them but never flood them. If someone wants to check the updates on blog posting, I believe using RSS is far better. Here is my RSS feed if you want to get updates http://aks-blog.com/feed

About The Author

Ashvini Saxena is a blogger, entrepreneur and coding enthusiast. He writes for this blog. He is the developer of famous plugin like Share Juice Pro and Comment Juice. You can connect with him at Google+ and Twitter

When offered to ‘follow’ a blog, basically what I can do are three things:
#1 I don’t subscribe, because I don’t like – or agree with – the content of the blog;
#2 I don’t subscribe, because I’m so interested I am pulled in almost every day without any word from the blogs owner;
#3 I subscribe, because I want to keep updated on changes or offers – for instance – once a week. I’ll filter out what I would like to see.

So option 3 is where the work starts on keeping people posted using e-mail. I like a little bit of personal approach, but ‘Dear Mr / Mrs.’ sets me off. I believe it’s all very personal. For keeping updated, e-mail is the way to go in my view. ‘Collecting’ e-mail addresses of potential customers makes they available to other means than just keeping them informed. Think about a mass-mailing for selected customers.

RSS does not have that advantage, it’e either all or nothing. Just putting in my two cents worth…

That is one good analysis. I have subscribed to a number of blogs too and I get mails in varying frequency. I was particularly not happy with the daily sales pitches sent to me. If you look at copyblogger , they practically send whole post in the mail. That means we never have to ever go to the site. But since they add so much value that it makes sense to go to them, when I need some information on blogging. They get a better recall value than for example a site that sends mail after mail with no relevant information.
As for RSS,once I was told by someone to include my whole post in RSS feed so that she could read it at leisure. I believe a lot of people want to read that way too. In my opinion, any which way the content should spread, so we need to provide all the possible means.
I appreciate your comment and thanks for it :)

Talk about missed opportunities. Instead of figuring out how to build relationships, the business you’re referencing (and others like it) are turning off people. What’s really sad is that getting people to opt-in is a huge step–so why would you blow it by spamming them instead of engaging them?